Yesterday my husband bought two bushels of green chile. He does this every year. He gets all excited and purchases both on the same day. For those not in the green chile scene, a bushel is about 25 pounds of raw chile. Then it's roasted and you take it home in a garbage sack to bag and freeze. Some people just simply put the chiles in freezer bags and be done with it, but we like to be able to use our chile as quickly as possible throughout the year, which means we peel it before bagging.

That means we had 50 pounds of chile to peel and bag last night. And it has to be done the same day, or else it will go bad.

So Jason took out the gloves, and I started labeling and opening bags. Two years ago we had a bag of extra-hot that had his hands stinging for days, so we always have gloves. Even though I used to work as a chile roaster, and I've shown him up as a peeler year after year, he insisted on peeling first. So I'm standing next to him over the sink, waiting for him to peel enough chiles for me to bag, and when he finally does, I just have to stand around again.

He takes a smoke break and asks me to take over. I peel a full strainer before he comes back in. So now I'm on peeling. I peeled from about 8:30 until midnight (I took breaks, but still, that's some long peeling hours). We purchased medium and hot, but they tasted more like super-mild and not-as-mild. Bummer for Jason, who eats a jalapeño with every meal, but great for me since my heat tolerance dropped significantly after having kids.